I'm just wondering if personal money transfers from a Swiss bank in CHF to euro-zone banks is usually done by SWIFT or SEPA. I just had a client try to transfer me CHF and it was rejected despite the details being correct. My Irish bank told me they'd have no problem receiving it but if they sent it by SWIFT it would automatically be rejected.

Wrong, you can't send CHF payments via SEPA, as SEPA payment is specific to EUR payments only and within Europe. However, you can send EUR payments from Switzerland as a SEPA payment to another EU country as Switzerland is signed up to this Payment Directive although it's not in EU.

All international transfers are done via SWIFT but SEPA payment instructions are sent within the SWIFT messaging instruction.

Think of SWIFT as a big ship and SEPA is a specially designed container, USD transfers will be differently designed container.

Hope this helps.

Last edited by meister; 14.05.2015 at 04:05.
Reason: More examples given